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Five leading abstracts services in the field of documentation were inspected. A measure of their coverage was obtained by matching the items of a bibliography against each service. All abstracts published by these services in 1964 were counted and ranked to estimate the scope of each service, to identify key journals and to assess the language problem. Leading journals were also identified by counts of citations following articles in nine leading documentation journals, mostly over a five‐year period. These citations were ranked in the same way as the abstracts in order to further identify key journals and to provide another view of the language barrier.

The paper attempts to provide an outline account of the development and context of scientific and technical communication during the twentieth century. The main channels and forms of communication are reviewed, and their changing contributions to the overall pattern of information flow. The ever‐increasing volume and diversity of scientific and technical information are emphasised. The paper concludes with some reflections on what may be learnt from this history.

A survey of the current state of documentation practice in museums is presented. This concentrates on the broad themes of the practice, making comparisons with analogous library procedures, where appropriate. A brief introduction to museums and their organizational framework within the United Kingdom is given. With this as background, the methods of documentation used by museums are reviewed, and a survey presented of current developments on an international and national scale.

The term ‘obsolescence’ occurs frequently in the literature of librarianship and information science. In numerous papers we are told how most published literature becomes obsolete within a measurable time, and that an item receives half the uses it will ever receive (‘half‐life’) in a few years. ‘Obsolescence’ is however very rarely defined, and its validity, interest, and practical value are often assumed rather than explained. Before reviewing studies on ‘obsolescence’, therefore, it is necessary to look at the concept and to identify the reasons why it should be of interest.

This review aims to present a speciality to the general documentationalist. It will contain too little chemistry for the chemist, and too little documentation for the documentalist. A reviewer cannot win!

The word documentation, by which this journal describes its scope, is a partial synonym of bibliography, and the history of both words, through eighty years in one case and through four hundred in the other, reflects the development of highly significant ideas. This paper begins by discussing bibliography in the light of R. Blum's exhaustively learned treatise, and continues with an original exposition of documentation, which cannot claim to reach Blum's standard of thoroughness but does, it is hoped, set out correctly the important things.

This paper provides an extensive survey of the recent literature on scholarly publishing and its conversion to the electronic medium. It then presents the results of a questionnaire survey of the UK‐based scholarly publishing industry. The results of this survey suggest that the publishers are moving quickly towards the use of the Internet as a major medium for the distribution of their products, though they do not expect an early print publication. They also do not expect that any alternative system, based on scholars providing their results free of charge at the point of use, will seriously threaten the future of the commercial scholarly publisher. They do, however, perceive several significant difficulties in the near future. These include a shortage of appropriately trained staff, uncertainties about pricing mechanisms, lack of adequate budgetary provision by universities for library purchases, and unrealistic expectations on the part of scholars that electronic information should be inexpensive.

The search for an easily installed, practicable and inexpensive information retrieval system continues unabated. This is reflected in the Aslib Library almost daily by requests for advice on the feasibility of installing this or that system, or for information on what systems are available in Great Britain. Study of the following bibliography, which covers only a narrow selection of information retrieval systems, will reveal that much original thought has been producing concrete results in this country. In fact, one of the earliest references is to a paper given at the twenty‐second Aslib Conference in 1947 by W. E. Batten, in which he describes his development of an ‘aspect’ card system—more often referred to today as ‘Peek‐a‐boo’ or ‘feature’ cards. Mr C. W. Cleverdon's Cranfield project is also adding considerable knowledge on the use of various indexing methods, including Uniterm.

Compliance with international standards for the presentation of periodical publications was evaluated in 221 Spanish biomedical journals. The objectives of the study were to determine the degree to which standards are actually used, and to develop recommendations for improving standards and increasing familiarity with them among authors, editors and publishers. Journals were identified from five printed and four electronic bibliographic databases. Compliance was assessed with the evaluation checklists developed by Lípez‐Cízar and Ruiz, based on 136 elements derived from standards for the presentation of periodical publications developed by the International Standardization Organization (ISO), and from recommendations published by UNESCO, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, the Council of Biology Editors and E.J. Huth. For most parameters three aspects were evaluated: presence, presentation and location. Compliance with publication standards by Spanish biomedical journals was generally low (34.3 per cent). This reflected the complete absence of specific elements relating to the volume (cover, contents list, index) and abstract sheet, rather than a general neglect of a large number of standards. In contrast, items related to characteristics that specifically distinguish periodical publications from other types of documents generally showed good compliance. The poor degree of compliance with standards by Spanish biomedical journals can be explained in part by the lack of familiarity with standards on the part of authors, editors and publishers, and in part by the fact that these three actors in the publication process are rarely involved in the creation and development of standards. To improve compliance, I propose changes in the policies on how standards are disseminated and how proposals for new standards or revisions of existing ones can be made, and suggest changes in some parts of ISO standards 8: 1977 and 215: 1986.